“AMERICAN SNIPER” SARAJEVO VERSION: “SERBIAN CHRIS KYLE” WAS A YOUNG WOMAN

TOP THIS PLOT, CLINT EASTWOOD: TOP SARAJEVO SNIPER WAS A SERB WOMAN WHO KILLED SERBS

The latest Clint Eastwood movie, “American Sniper,” has already grossed over $257 million in less than two weeks, and is setting box office records worldwide. It has also been nominated for a plethora of Academy Awards including the Best Picture.

So you can imagine my wife’s surprise when I told her I had no interest whatsoever in seeing such a film.

“Why not?”

“Because it promotes state terrorism and cold-bloodied murder disguised as ‘heroism.’ Because it’s American/New World Order jingoistic war propaganda. Because it incites hatred of Muslims. Just like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ promoted the hatred of Germans. Because it appeals to the lowest, bestial human instincts. Because it perpetuates the lie on which the entire Iraqi war was based. Because it’s so simplistic that it insults intelligence…”

The movie narrative sets up the Iraq war as a morality play: “There are evil terrorists, and Chris Kyle needs to kill them. It’s as simple as that.” That’s the premise of the entire plot and justification for murder (see “American Sniper is a dishonest whitewash of the Iraq war”).

It is not often that I get riled up over a movie. Especially one I have not even seen (except for trailers and reviews).  After all, Hollywood is and always has been first a foremost a tinseltown. Not to be taken seriously. Except when so many naive people get duped by its warmongering propaganda.

You see, the above box office figures suggest that more than 32 million people have already seen the film in less than two weeks!

I just shook my head in disbelief. And then I recalled my 1997 Washington Times column – “Dumbing Down of America: Dancing ’round the Golden Calf.” The New World Order elite are succeeding in stupefying America beyond their wildest dreams.

BACK IN THE DAY, WHEN SERBIAN SNIPERS WERE THE “BAD GUYS,” A SERB WOMAN TOPPED THEM ALL

After several days of contemplation and introspection I finally realized why this movie grated on me so much.

It was the sheer duplicity, a double standard of the New World Order crowd that funds and promotes warmongering films like the “American Sniper.”

Back in the 1990s, when I worked as a war correspondent in the Balkans, I took a number of trips to Bosnia. Came close to and across some front lines. Had been in the sight of Sarajevo snipers. And have found out that the western media often and deliberately distorted the facts I saw on the ground.

Remember the famed Sarajevo “sniper alley?” The blame was always assigned to “Serbian snipers” who were supposedly killing innocent civilians from the hills around Sarajevo.

And many did. It was a civil war. All three parties (Serbs, Muslims and Croats) had committed crimes against humanity. But only the Serbs were blamed and later prosecuted by the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague.

To generate the American public support for the Bosnian Muslims, the western media painted the pictures in simplistic black and white terms.  The Muslims were the innocent victims of the Serb aggression. The Serbs were the “evil terrorists.”  All that was missing was a “Chris Kyle”-type hero on the Muslim side to kill the Serbs.

Sarajevo’s Top Sniper Was a Young Woman

Well, there was such a warrior in Sarajevo. And she was a 20-year old woman. Her code name was “Arrow” (“Strela” in Serbian). She was allegedly the top sniper in Sarajevo killing the Serb snipers on the surrounding hills (see the Associated Press, June 30, 1992 – “Woman is a top sniper in the war for Sarajevo”).

And now, here’s a bizarre twist. This intrepid fighter, the “Chris Kyle” of the Bosnian Muslim army, was a Serb! Well, at least according to that Associated Press report.

A Serb killing Serbs. Top that twist, Clint Eastwood!

Good enough for Hollywood. But I as the Truth in Media founder and a former war correspondent, I had my doubts.

I spent almost the entire day trying to find out what happened to that mysterious Sarajevo “war hero.” But the trail ran dry after the summer of 1992. I never discovered her real name even a quarter century later. The only photo of her ever published was the one you see above, with her face partially covered by her hair. After 1992 – nothing. Nada. Zippo.

This is the last reference I found:

“Her code name was Strela, (Arrow) a Serb girl of 20 yrs fighting with the Bosnian army as an anti-sniper sniper. When Guerlain met her she was crying. Not remembering how many she had killed she later injured herself to quit her job” (see Daniel Guerlain story).”

Was “Arrow” a Mad Av/Hollywood Character?

Which makes me wonder if, while such a sniper may have existed, Arrow may have been elevated to her mythical hero status by the western media?

Just like in the Hollywood production of “Wag the Dog,” for example, a mental patient is made to look like a war hero. Except that the “Sarajevo Chris Kyle” would achieve the hallowed status by killing his fellow-American troops.

And we were supposed swallow that kind of a diabolical plot hook, line and sinker? 

And then there were other doubts. Lest we forget, in June 1992, the Bosnian war was barely getting under way. Things were still unraveling in Sarajevo and confusion reigned all around. The Muslims were losing. Badly. They needed a hero. And someone to hate and blame. The American media provided both.

Skilled in minting heroes and bogies, the American media came up with Arrow, a mythical Serbian female sniper who was supposedly killing her own brothers like Rambo killed the communists in Vietnam. Or like Chris Kyle killed the Muslims a quarter century later in Iraq.

And then, just like in a Hollywood movie, once her “hero” usefulness ceased, Arrow was forgotten and sent into oblivion as if she had never existed. No medals were pinned on her. No memorials erected to this Sarajevo “hero.”

LOOKING DOWN SNIPER GUNSIGHTS IN BOTH DIRECTIONS

Meanwhile, in July 1994, I did find myself standing on Mt Trebevic above Sarajevo and looking at the city through a sniper-like tripod (see “Excerpts from Bosnia Wartime Diaries“). And this is roughly what I saw (right).

A Serbian army major, whom you see in the photo (left), took me to a double fence filled with rocks between the heavy wooden planks.

“I had this built because of the sniper fire from the city,” he explained.  “You can take some pictures from here, if you’d like. Just don’t stick your neck out too far.”

So there is no question that snipers were active on both sides in Sarajevo.  Just like this photo image reveals. They held each other in their sniper gunsights. Or maybe even killed their own people so as to blame the other side.

But you’d never know it by the western (American) media reports. The Serbs were the bad guys. The Sarajevo Muslims their innocent victims. That’s the lasting public casting of the Bosnian war.

So that’s why similar duplicity and double standard inherent in honoring Chris Kyle’s achievements as the “American Sniper” grated on me so much.

There is no honor in killing people.

Whether a sniper is an American, Serbian, or any other nationality makes no difference. Such state-sponsored terrorism is no better than the alleged other terrorist attacks. Because in the end, no matter how we dress it up, it is the individual who pulls the trigger or pushes the button.

Any decent human being must condemn all such killings all with equal fervor.

And my way of doing it is by staying away from the “American sniper,” the movie. And now also by writing this piece to explain why.

EPILOGUE

OTHER CRITICAL COMMENTS ABOUT “AMERICAN SNIPER”

I did find some comfort in the fact that I was not alone in the moral condemnation of this film. Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, a Navy SEAL himself, slammed not just the film by the  ‘American Sniper’ himself – Chris Kyle: ‘You Can’t Have Honor if You’re a Liar’.

“A hero must be honorable, must have honor. And you can’t have honor if you’re a liar,” Ventura told the Associated Press. “There is no honor in lying.”

Ventura’s filed a defamation lawsuit against Kyle’s estate last year and won $1.8 million.

Kyle claimed in his book “American Sniper,” on which the movie is based, that he knocked out a man at a California bar in 2006 for saying the SEALs “deserve to lose a few” in Iraq. Kyle later identified the character he nicknamed “Scruff Face” as Ventura during several media appearances to promote the book. Ventura said it didn’t happen, and a jury believed him.

Kyle was killed in 2013 by a veteran he was trying to help. God’s reaction to “sniper heroism?”

One thing is for sure – the film has generated a firestorm of pro and con reactions all over the world. Mostly con, it seems, even in the country the likes of the “American Sniper” were sent to “liberate” (during Operation Iraqi Freedom).

In Baghdad, where much of the film is set, the movie was pulled after running for a week. The Mansour Mall theater box office employee said management made the decision “because the hero of this film boasts of killing more than 160 Muslims” (see USA TODAY Baghdad moviegoers story, Jan 29).